AIDS Community Television program #16originally telecast 4/20/93
(29:00)

UNITED NATIONS WORLD AIDS DAY, DECEMBER 1, 1992.
JAMAICAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS:

"And as the global community monitors the rapid spread of
mankind's most fatal disease to date, the use of statistics has
become the sobering measure of the challenge facing us. In just
over one decade, the cumulative number of cases of AIDS reported
worldwide, up to July 1992, has risen to 550,440. In the Americas,
this figure stands at 291,210, with 179,853 reported deaths.

"Even more alarming is the assessment of those infected by
the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, which causes the acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome, AIDS. The World Health Organization
estimates that already one in every 250 adults on earth is infected
and that, by the year 2000, 40 million people will be infected.
This is an international challenge which demands the highest level
of united concern and solidarity in action."

BACKGROUND CHANT: "WHEN DO WE WANT
IT? NOW! WHAT DO WE WANT? A CURE FOR AIDS!"

FATHER MARCHING: "We need to
do something about finding a cure. We need to do something about
finding a cure now. There are too many people that are dying every
day of this illness, with a government that has absolutely no
interest in helping these people get better.INTERVIEWER: "What are some reasons why you got involved
in this group?"FATHER MARCHING: "Very simply, I have a child who's
sick, and there is nothing worse than a parent having to look
and see you've got a sick child, where he's getting no help whatsoever.

WOMAN MARCHING: I'm walking because I lost a nephew to
AIDS last year."

WOMAN AT KENNEBUNKPORT PROTEST: "I'm also here because
too many friends have died." (CUT)

BOB RAFSKY:
"Silence = death. But that is my point. Out there, I'll continue
to raise my voice as long as I'm able. But in here, in these rooms,
these churches, whatever, I will be silent out of respect for
Tom and all the others, and out of respect and prefiguring the
absolute silence into which I will fall after my own death.

"I pray for the new generation of activists who are trying
so hard, and often so brilliantly, to succeed, to keep us all
alive. But whether or not they succeed, their emergence, their
simple presence--and many of them are here tonight--is a great
comfort to me."

LARRY KRAMER:
"Why are all the fights left to the activists? Why do we
have to do all the fights? Why are--we have to fight your fights?
The ACTG [AIDS Clinical Trials Group] system has produced nothing
of any value. The studies are all the product of second-rate,
middle-of-the-road decisions that aren't controversial.

"And everybody knows that. You all schlep down there three
times a year, at taxpayers' expense, and you sit there at these
meetings and you know it's a load of shit. You know you could
do better work! Why is--why are all the fights left to the activists?
Why do we have to do all the fights? Why do we have to fight your
fights?"

GARANCE FRANK-RUTA: "Activism has become an integral
part of the AIDS political landscape, and everyone expects activists
to fulfill their role as activists, and where activists do not
fulfill that role, people are disappointed and people also think
something is not important.

"Because there was not a big activist response around Rifabutin
for the prophylaxis of MAC, the FDA thought it wasn't a big issue,
and therefore it wasn't a problem, that they didn't recommend
to approve it immediately. When activists went down there and
said, "Listen, this is a problem. This is something that
we do need to see approved, or at least reviewed more--more expeditiously,
you know, and that this drug is as important a drug as ddC and
has better data, probably," then the FDA says, "Okay,
this is an issue."

"And it's really scary to feel that people are dependent
on your doing these things for them to consider something a big
issue, you know, because that's not what we want, and when we
went to the FDA to talk to them about Rifabutin, we said, "Listen,
you have to understand that this is your job, not ours, and you
have to do it because it's important and because it's the right
thing to do, not because we're screaming at you about it, and
that the reason we weren't screaming at you is not because it
wasn't important but because we thought the situation was going
okay. We didn't know there was a problem."

DAVID KESSLER [FDA Commissioner] : "There's no question
we've learned a lot from the activists. We've learned we have
to be accountable. What we have seen is a dramatic change in the
last couple of years. Look where we started off. I mean, the activists
were out there scaling this building, really, I mean, burning
us in effigy. Now, they're sitting at the advisory committees,
I mean knowing, bringing in an awful lot of expertise, scientific
expertise." (CUT)

MARK HARRINGTON:
"When I did my sort of basic science study on myself where
I gave up a lymph node and they analyzed it and shoot pictures
of it and sliced it up, and what--what it really showed was there's
no--I have 600 T cells and I've never really drifted below 550,
but there's millions of viruses in my--in my lymph node.

"There's none in my blood; it's almost undetectable in my
blood. But the virus is continually generating copies of itself
throughout--throughout the disease. There's no latency, and it's
flinging copies of itself at the immune system and, for years,
the immune system is capturing them, holding them, killing the
cells that were infected with them.

"For years this is going on and then, at some point, it collapses.
And it may not collapse totally all at once and dramatically.
It may be that it's more slow, in a slow way sort of worn down,
but the whole immunological tissues of the body, which are not
in the blood, that are lymph nodes, are in a very specialized
tissue which is devoted towards showing antigen and responding
to them and making antibodies and making cytotoxic cells.

"Something destroys it. Something destroys the peripheral
dendritic cells that are in the lymph nodes, that hold everything
up, and AZT and those drugs aren't going to affect that process
at all because if those cells are infected, and it looks like
they are, from all the pictures, then they're chronically infected
cells that aren't getting killed by the virus, unlike T cells,
and that are just churning out copies.

"So the kind of drugs that are going to work against those
kind of infected cells, whether they're macrophages or dendritic
cells--they're not going to be AZT-like drugs that prevent uninfected
cells from getting infected. They're going to have to actually
turn off virus replication, and so that they're going to be approaches,
maybe, like the TAT inhibitor, the protease inhibitor or some
other approaches.

"Now, unfortunately, all those approaches are being developed
by drug companies from hell--"

A VAN PULLS OVER FOR ACTIVISTS TO RUSH OUT AND CHAIN THEMSELVES
TO THE FACTORY GATES OF HOFFMAN LA ROCHE PHARMACEUTICALS.
"Go, go, go. Go out the back door. Go--" SIRENS BLARING
IN BACKGROUND.

SCOTT SAWYER:
"Hoffman-La Roche is one of the largest of the international
pharmaceutical companies. The company owns exclusive rights to
several of the most promising experimental AIDS treatments. However,
as hundreds of thousands of people, worldwide, continue to become
sick and die, Hoffman-La Roche acts as though they are merely
testing new cold remedies.

"For people with HIV, their lives may well depend on the
rapid evaluation of the safety and efficacy of new drugs. We don't
have time to wait for Hoffman-La Roche to find new ways to bill
the taxpayer for their research and development. The company must
assume responsibility for the timely study of their patented compounds.

"We demand: (1) that Hoffman-La Roche must immediately provide
TAT compound to the NIH and contract research organizations so
that the time lost developing this compound can be regained. Within
30 days, the company must also present a plan to fully evaluate
this compound.

"Demand 5: Hoffman-La Roche must immediately
release the results of the UK and French protease trial. The company
must also find ways to scale up production for clinical trials
here in the United States.

"Demand 6: Hoffman-La Roche must reduce the price of the
PCR test by 50%. Hoffman-La Roche must also reduce the price of
the TAQ enzyme by 50%.

"Demand 7: Hoffman-La Roche must end its discrimination against
women and people of color in the enrollment of clinical studies
for Roche drugs.

PWA:
"Because of mismanagement, and perhaps an effort on the part
of Hoffman-La Roche to inflate their stocks, they have not developed
a drug that might save my life."

ANNOUNCER AT ASTRA PHARMACEUTICAL ACTION:

"ACT UP pulls in front of Astra in rented trucks, blocking
employees from driving to work, and pushing their demands that
the company lower the price of a drug that can prevent blindness
in AIDS patients. The company says it's charging so much because
it needs to recover $100 million in research costs.

"Under these trucks, ACT UP protesters are chained so the
truck can't be moved."

INTERVIEWER: "Does doing this make it any easier for
you?"

BOB RAFSKY: "Yes, it does. Astra is trying to make
a killing off of this epidemic. This is no longer a drug company.
This is a foreign-owned, criminal enterprise, attempting to make
a killing off of my life."

INTERVIEWER: "How long are you prepared to stay under
here, handcuffed to this axle on the truck?"

BOB RAFSKY: "Until I feel that I'm going to lose a
finger or a toe."

MAN (SHOUTING): "...stop for a minute!

ANNOUNCER: "ACT UP members cave in, coming out from
under the trucks, and they are arrested. Some of their fellow
activists complain that these sixties-like tactics are passé."

BOB RAFSKY: "We may be passé, but the price
of the drug we were protesting under those trucks is coming down.
If that's passé, I'll stay passé until I die."

AT THE AMSTERDAM AIDS CONFERENCE IN 1992, A GROUP OF AIDS ACTIVISTS,
CARRYING A BAG OF CREMATED ASHES, CONFRONT PHARMACEUTICAL REPRESENTATIVES.

WOMAN: "I don't know how else to make this real to
you."

MAN: "Those are his ashes."

WOMAN: "But this is what's left of him, and this is
what's left of a lot of people with AIDS. And I don't--"

WOMAN: " Michael didn't have a problem getting it.
Michael fought for this drug. I just want you to know that this'll--"

PHARMACEUTICAL REPRESENTATIVE: "Oh, so he got the
drug then?"

MAN: "No, he didn't get the drug--"

WOMAN: "No."

MAN: "--and maybe what you should be thinking about
is why so few people are accessing your FAIR program."

PHARMACEUTICAL REPRESENTATIVE: "Umhmm."

MAN: "We want a 50% reduction, and you will hear from
us, and you will see us again and again, until there is a 50%
price reduction. I would also like to see an independent audit
of the 100 million R&D. Sara was at the meeting and she knows
(other names?)."

WOMAN: "We don't want to stand here and argue with
you about inflated figures of research. We just want you to do
what's right because--and have some understanding, as one human
being to another human being, not as an activist to a drug company
but one human being to another, have some understanding about
what all of this means to people as individuals."

AVRAM FINKELSTEIN:
"Every time an attempt is made to regulate the pharmaceutical
industry in America, the pharmaceutical industry threatens that
they will have to completely close down shop, that it will destroy
their business, it will destroy this discovery of scientific,
essential scientific biological research that has saved lives,
and they cannot in any way let that happen, and--and that is still
true till this day, and the example we have of that is, pharmaceuticals
won't open their books to discuss the pricing of life-saving therapies,
and as recently as the prior--in the Prior investigation, the
Democrat from Arkansas, investigations for--in the Committee on
Aging into price gouging on drugs."

SENATOR PRYOR:
"The pharmaceutical manufacturers have done nothing except,
"Don't control our prices. Don't get in our business. Let
us decide that we're going to voluntarily restrain our prices,"
and, as of yet, they've not done it. The truth is that what we've
got to do is--is find a solution to these very costly drugs that
are rising beyond the cost of inflation, three, four, five times,
and we've got to see to it that the elderly people, those who
are most vulnerable out there, and also families across the board,
are protecting--are protected in this huge price abuse thing of
Mr. Mossinghoff and of his--of the group that he represents."PHARMACEUTICAL REPRESENTATIVE:
"Tax-enforced price controls--price controls simply don't
work in the United States. They're so foreign to our free-market
system that I don't think they'll be enacted."

GOV. CUOMO: "We have to reduce the cost of drugs,
the cost of the administration of the health care system. Trillions
of dollars are involved here."

AVRAM FINKELSTEIN: "The NIH AIDS research program
is a shambles. It's a lie. It's not going to save any lives, and
they've got to change the whole thing. In basic science, when
you're trying to discover a cure for something or trying to, you
know, get involved in the true discovery of science which is unencumbered
by whether you're going to make money out of--at the end of the
day, you have to ask a series of questions, and you cast the net
out very far.

"The NIH AIDS research effort never did that. They locked
in immediately to some theories that were forwarded by insiders,
by people inside the National Cancer Institute. They were subscribing
to beliefs, theories and current trains of thought that were sort
of sexy in the science, in the world of biomedical science. And,
p.s., what's considered sexy in the world of biomedical science
is very much influenced by what's considered by pharmaceutical
companies and biomedical research entities that pay for these--the
results of this research.

"So everything sort of funnels back into that big question.
We're in America; it's capitalism, you know, and there's money.
The principal investigators, who are the crack, sort of hierarchical
best-of-the-best team in terms of AIDS research at the NIH, and
who make decisions over which drug should be investigated--easily
over half of them get consulting fees from the large pharmaceutical
companies, like the big three pharmaceutical companies--Hoffman-La
Roche, Burroughs Welcome, Bristol-Myers.

"So the people who are getting money from the pharmaceutical
companies are also making decisions about what drugs should and
shouldn't be decided on, and the lion's share of the drugs that
are being investigated in the AIDS clinical trial groups are Burroughs
Welcome drugs, Hoffman-La Roche drugs, Bristol-Myers drugs, so--get
the connection?

"Science is not self-policing and altruistic and without
conflict of interest. It's not the case in America, no matter
how goodly individual research scientists are. In the political
and social context of America, it is not without conflict of interest.

"There's only one group that can and will study the conflicts
of interest in the NIH Aids--the Federal AIDS research agenda.
That group is AIDS activists. That's why we feel it's essential
that we teach ourselves, that we teach each other what the realities
are."

DR. MICHAEL MERSON: "Activism has been so important in the fight against
AIDS, in getting drugs available, in getting information out,
in getting the right research done.

"We've learned, in AIDS, the importance of involving HIV
positive people in the fight. We've done things with AIDS that
are going to set the landmark for how to work with many diseases
throughout the rest of this century and into the next century.

"I'm Dr. Michael Merson. I'm Director of the World Health
Organization, Global Program on AIDS. We've just released some
new figures on the status of the epidemic. In the last six months,
another one million persons have been infected with HIV, the virus
that causes AIDS. That's one person every 15 to 20 seconds. That
means that the total number of people infected worldwide is now
between 11 and 13 million.

"Of the one million adults that have been infected in the
last six months, almost half of them have been women, but when
you realize that one in three sexually active adults in some cities
in East Africa and Central Africa are infected, when you realize
that 70% of female sex workers in some parts of the world are
infected--these are frightening numbers. When you realize there
are going to be 10 million orphans, worldwide, by the year 2000,
children whose parents have died of AIDS, you start to get some
idea of the seriousness of the problem.

"The top priority, worldwide, must be prevention since we
do not have a cure for this disease. What we must emphasize is
safer sexual behavior. We know all we need to know to prevent
this infection, if we can just get people to adapt safer sexual
practices. That means abstinence of sex, which is not very common;
more likely, it means mutual fidelity or, if this is not possible,
using a condom.

"There's no question that condoms work to prevent transmission.
They need to be promoted in every society. It's a matter of life
and death. Each society needs to find a way to do it, but they
must do it--that's what's important."

C. EVERET KOOP:
"How can you teach a junior high school kid about AIDS and
how to prevent contracting it if he doesn't know anything about
sexuality?"

DOLORIS AILING: "Some of the language in the glossary,
such as the explanation of 'condom,' the explanation of a homosexual,
the explanation of 'homophobia'--and I don't see the word 'heterophobia'
here, which is the fear of the traditional family prevailing in
this nation--they talk about dental dams, and I'm a married woman,
and I see you squinting; I'm a married woman with a 22-year-old
son, and I had to read a fourth grade curriculum to find out that
a dental dam is an oral condom used in oral sex."

INTERVIEWER: "But you believe this shouldn't be taught
till after the eighth grade?"

DOLORIS AILING: "My God, it shouldn't be taught at
all. It talks here about oral sex involving the anus: use a dental
dam for that. They're talking about nonoxynol-9, KY jellies, foams
and gels to young children. Now, I know the argument is they're
already sexually active. Well, I--"

INTERVIEWER: "Many of them are."

DOLORIS AILING: "Well, many are."(CUT)

TEENAGER WITH AIDS:
"If kids don't use a condom, if they don't listen to me and
just trust me that I know what I'm talking about, they're going
to go through hell. Look at the size of these tubes going straight
into my body, you know. This is a big tube. This goes right into
your ribs. And it's a lot of suffering. (CUT)

MAN: "Our view is that homosexuality and lesbianism
are the moral equivalent of drug abuse. They are self-destructive
practices, quite on a par with drug abuse. Half of the homosexual
males in New York City are HIV-infected, just to cite one statistic.

ANN NORTHROP: "I hardly know where to begin, but this
accusation of equivalence to drug abuser and this talk about disease
is some of the most disgusting, horrible language I've heard in
my entire life.

"The lesbian and gay community is a diverse, moral, intelligent,
law-abiding community that has been hit with the tragedy of HIV
infection, as have many communities in this country and this world.

"The gay men who have HIV, in the vast majority, got it before
we knew there was such a thing, and when we did find out that
HIV existed and we figured out that there was such a thing as
safe sex, and gay men started practicing it, the HIV infection
rate plummeted in the gay male community.

"The gay male community have been heroes in this epidemic
and have tried to teach the rest of the world how to protect themselves
and how to treat this as the alarming epidemic it is, but since
the Catholic Church puts morality ahead of life, and insists that
it is a greater sin to wear a condom than to protect one's life
and protect one's self from infection, more and more men and women,
heterosexual, monogamous, are being infected in this city and
throughout the country and throughout the world.

"The country and the world would do well to look at the example
of gay men, who have been heroes and very farsighted in this epidemic."
(CUT)

DEMONSTRATION AT THE BOARD OF EDUCATION, New York City.

TOM BEER:
"We hold the Board of Education accountable for the lives
of students in New York, and they have been irresponsible with
the lives of students in this city. There is a long history, going
back to their early opposition to the HIV and AIDS curriculum,
which was only passed due to incredible efforts on our part and
the part of other AIDS educators throughout the city.

"Certain members of the Board, including Irene Impellizari,
Michael Petrides, have fought us on condom availability, making
condoms available to students in the school. Then probably the
most flagrant thing that happened this spring was the passage
of the morality oath, which requires AIDS educators coming in
to teach students about AIDS to teach that abstinence is preferable
to safer sex. Now, this is just teaching kids about AIDS using
fear tactics.

"Students need to know all the information possible to make
an informed choice about how they're going to protect themselves
from HIV infection and these people, because they're in the grips
of the Catholic Church and various other Christian fundamentalist
groups, are trying to impose religious dogma in the public schools.

SUZANNE PHARR:
"Because they have people already so terrified about AIDS
in this country that they're able to mobilize fear, and then,
at the other hand, they're preventing education. So they have
these two things going, saying, "These people are going to
kill you, and don't let them come in the schools and don't let
people educate about AIDS." So those two things, working
together, is like a formula for death, you know. It's to create--create
a climate where, one, people want to kill us because we're seen
as carriers of disease, and two, create a climate so we can't
even prevent the disease with the young people." (CUT)

YOUTH WITH AIDS:
"I don't really think that there is any thoughts going from
AIDS being HIV infected, and youth, as a combination. Reality
shows that youth starts to be risk factor #1, and a part of the
fact that we see youth and the learning process, and if you want
to teach someone, you better start early, and things like that."

YOUTH WITH AIDS:
"I heard that I was HIV positive when I was 16, and I've
been diagnosed with AIDS when I was 20, I think. Now I'm 23."

WOMAN:
"Teens are dying of AIDS, and it's important that we educate
them about the dangers of having unprotected sex."

INTERVIEWER: "Do you think the city is trying?"

WOMAN:
"The city is not doing enough because teens are dying every
day. Every seven minutes somebody dies. It's got to stop!"

WOMAN: (CRYING)
"I'm here for my sister who just died in October also, and
who--my brother who's lying in a hospital dying now, so I need
your support also, please. (CUT)

REVEREND:
"I'm pastor of the First Corinthian Baptist Church here in
the city, and any time that our young people is so concerned about
this terrible disease, AIDS, that they reach out to us for help
in educating them and to alert the officials that this is something
dangerous, (nothing to play with?), but asking for a solution,
and I think when they reach out for us, we ought to be there for
them." (CUT)

INTERVIEWER: "What do you think of demonstrations
now, and direct action?"

YOUTH:
"Yeah. I kind of--I kind of like it. I just hope they get--they
get the message, 'cause, you know, we're trying our best to--to
educate them." (CUT) (END)